Review: Alchemy Theatre’s Mack & Mabel

Watching a musical, any musical, is always a bit weird at first. As the houselights fade, the audience is abruptly transported from a world where no one sings and dances without cause or provocation (except, perhaps, at 2am on Dirty Sixth) to one where everyone does, and that takes some getting used to.

For some musicals, weirdness becomes bewilderment when the characters are based on actual people who, in life, wouldn’t be caught dead singing and dancing – characters like the title gangsters in Bonnie & Clyde, the 1930s cosmetics entrepreneurs Elizabeth Arden and Helena Rubinstein in War Paint, and silent film star Charlie Chaplin in Chaplin. Hell, it takes a few minutes just getting used to Chaplin speaking.

That same sense of bewilderment comes early and often in Mack & Mabel, on Broadway in 1974 and currently being staged by East Austin’s Alchemy Theatre. The story focuses on the rakish silent movie pioneer Mack Sennett – whose popular short films went to brash and burlesque extremes to make an audience laugh – and his favorite onscreen ingénue, Mabel Normand. As the show begins, we see an aging Mack alone on an empty film set looking back on his career. The action dives back in time to relive his first meeting and turbulent love affair with Mabel, his early days in New York, and his rising success and plummeting downfall in Hollywood.

The show lasted a mere 66 performances on Broadway, despite a cast composed of A-list actors and the distinguished pedigrees of composer/lyricist Jerry Herman (Mame, La Cage aux Folles, Hello Dolly!) and script writer Michael Stewart (Bye Bye Birdie). According to reviews, the show failed because the real lives of these characters were so depressing and self-destructive – the stubborn and bullying Mack lost Mabel to another man and was ruined by the advent of talkies, while Mabel died young after years of scandal and drug addiction – that no amount of wordsmithing or lavish production numbers, of which there are plenty, could save it.

The revised version onstage at Alchemy Theatre, created for a 1995 London revival, downsizes the production and gives the show a happier ending. Yet it does nothing to eradicate the darkness in every page or bring dimension to the cliche characters created by the playwright; and while most of Herman’s songs are gems, the awkward ones with a roaring 1920s flavor but a stale 1970s sensibility are left untouched. Still, this rendition succeeds where the Broadway production failed.

Director Michael Cooper takes full advantage of his intimate performance space by keeping the bare stage that starts the play mostly bare throughout. He also has his actors seated around the small stage during scenes that don’t involve them, which, along with dim lighting and some black-and-white clips of Sennett’s films playing above them on large screens, creates a haunting, dreamlike atmosphere that works well with the story being told. Most impressive is that Cooper and choreographer Richard Cerato streamline and retrofit the large-scale, silent film-style production numbers, trading grandeur for charm. This is most evident in “Tap Your Troubles Away,” wonderfully performed by Katya Welch, Stephanie Slayton, and Lucia McMahon.

The intimacy of this production also allows actors Sebastian Vitale as Mack and Sarah Marie Curry as Mabel to bring more nuanced performances to the stage, which allows their damaged characters to come across as sympathetic – something the Broadway production never achieved. While Vitale doesn’t quite capture Mack’s manipulative nature, his portrayal more than makes up for it in allure and charisma. He also sings the hell out of “I Won’t Send Roses,” where he explains his unromantic tendencies to Mabel. The silver-throated Curry is brilliant as Mabel, and her performance of the torch song “Time Heals Everything” is a master class in acting through singing.

Sacrificed in this Alchemy Theatre production is a true sense of the Sennett style of comedy. The Keystone Cops-inspired musical number “Hit ’Em on the Head,” for instance, is reduced to a rather silly and clumsy enterprise. Also, substituting an orchestra for a single keyboard, played well by Ellie Jarrett Shattles, doesn’t do justice to or provide sufficient energy for Herman’s songs. Neither do some of the ensemble players, despite what are likely the best efforts of Musical Director Adam Roberts.

Taken as a whole, however, this staging is most certainly worth seeing. Kudos to the brain trust at Alchemy Theatre for selecting and fully committing to a seldom-done, bewildering musical.

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Mack & Mabel

The Alchemy Theatre, 130 Pedernales Ste. 318-B
thealchemytheatre.org
Through May 29
Running time: 2 hrs., 15 min.